Skip to main content
Main

Blanquette of Veal

A veal dish simmered with broth, onions, and seasonings, finished with a butter‑flour sauce and egg‑lemon custard, served with toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Blanquette of Veal

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a pan, warm the broth or water with the veal, tongue, ham, or bacon.

  2. Season with chopped onions, salt, and white pepper. Gently warm until hot.

  3. Mix butter and flour together, then add to the pan, stirring until thickened.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove from heat and quickly stir in milk or cream mixed with egg yolk and lemon juice.

  2. Serve with triangular pieces of toasted or fried bread.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Veal
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender as it gently warms in the liquid.
Butter and flour
Together they form a roux that thickens the liquid into a smooth sauce.
Egg yolk
Enriches and thickens the sauce, giving it a silky, velvety texture when stirred in off the heat.
Milk or cream
Adds richness and moisture, softening the sauce's flavor and body.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce and balances its creaminess.

The step that matters

Stir in the egg yolk mixture off the heat. Egg yolk thickens by gentle heat and can curdle or scramble if the sauce is too hot. Removing the pan from the heat before adding the yolk, milk or cream, and lemon juice, and stirring quickly, keeps the sauce smooth and silky.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (veal, ham, onion, butter, flour, milk, egg):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against veal, ham, onion, butter, flour, milk, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipes